Never Change
by The Disreputable Writer
Summary: As the world fell apart, Castiel watched the same thing happen to his relationship with Dean. A visitor from the past gives him one last chance to get it right. End!verse. Dean/Castiel.
1. Chapter 1

**WARNING**: dub-con, drug use/abuse, a highly dysfunctional relationship

* * *

><p>It was so easy, the first time we fell into bed together. It was as if it were always meant to happen. Lucifer was free, Sam was gone, and the end, as they used to say, was nigh. For the year after we failed to prevent the end of the world, Dean tried to hold it together. Tried to convince himself that there was still a way to fix all of this. But with every defeat he lost a bit of himself until finally he turned and, childlike, clung to the one thing he had left. Me.<p>

It wasn't as if I took advantage. He was also the one thing I had left.

We fell into each other in desperation and fear, and maybe that's where we first went wrong. Maybe I should have waited until we could hold each other with love and certainty. But I'd waited so long, and it felt so right. I couldn't stop to think until we were already spent, panting, draped across one another as our sweat cooled on our bodies. Outside the motel room we could hear the sound of breaking glass. The world was ending out there, but I was not afraid. I had my Dean.

"I love you," I murmured as I closed my eyes. But he was already asleep.

* * *

><p>After the first few times I told him I loved him and didn't get a response, I started to get self-conscious. Sometimes I feared scaring him away, so I tried to avoid the words for as long as I could. Other times I said it every chance I got, as if my tenacity could have worn him down.<p>

"Be careful. I love you," I told him in Eugene, Oregon when we split up to hunt a demon who might have been a lead on the Colt. The University campus was falling into ruin, and it was hard to tell how much of that was because of the demon in town and how much of it was just the way things were everywhere back then. Dean gave me a cocky grin, but nothing else as the doors of the dorm elevator closed between us.

Months after that lead failed to pan out, we tracked down Missouri Moseley. Dean seemed to think that she could give us some direction, but she had become increasingly hard to find ever since the demons figured out that she had been aiding Hunters and scrying on their plans. We followed her trail from Lawrence, Kansas and eventually caught up to her in a little town in Maine. The demons had gotten there first. I held Dean's hand as we walked away from the library where we had found her obituary. "I love you, Dean," I told him as I thought about the fragility of human life, and my fear that one day I would have to bury the person I loved as I had seen so many others do. He didn't answer.

"Love you," I whispered, pressing my back into Dean's chest to try to get more warmth as we fell asleep in the backseat of the Impala on a lonely stretch of road in Montana. We weren't looking for jobs by then; jobs found us wherever we went. So we just drove and drove and tried to outrun them.

"Yeah, Cas, me too," Dean said to the back of my neck. I pulled his arms tighter around me, my heart soaring. That was enough for me back then, even though he never actually said the words.

* * *

><p>We squatted in an abandoned factory for a couple of weeks, nursing our wounds after a particularly close call with a particularly nasty gang of demons. It was remote enough that, when I returned one day from a food run to hear two voices coming from inside, I knew immediately that something was wrong.<p>

As I pressed myself against the wall outside the door, trying to gauge the situation, I could hear Dean's voice saying, "I don't know why you assholes keep thinking my answer's gonna change. Haven't the last two years been enough proof? I'm never gonna say yes to Michael, and Sammy's never gonna say yes to Lucifer. Game over. Your plan's shot."

By the way Dean was speaking, I could guess who the other voice would belong to before I even heard it. Zachariah sounded older and more tired than I remembered when he said, "That's very cute, Dean, the way you think you can impress me. So you ruined our plan. So what? You didn't win. Or is this the way you hoped things would turn out? We gave you the best offer there was to be had, and you spat in our faces. Now I'm offering it to you one last time."

"Good," Dean interrupted, "Then I won't have to hear it again."

"I don't think you quite understand," said Zachariah in his measured voice filled with thinly-veiled anger, "Once we're gone, we're gone. You won't get another chance, and there's no other way to stop Lucifer."

I could imagine the look on Dean's face as he said, "After repeating myself so many times, I'm trying to come up with a new way of telling you to go fuck yourself."

There was a long silence before Zachariah spoke again, and this time the anger in his voice was not veiled at all. "You stupid brat," he hissed, "This was the Divine Plan! You think you know better? You think the world is safer in your inept hands? Well, if you refuse to be Michael's sword, then you are worthless. Lower than trash. Hmm. Maybe I'll do some housecleaning before I go…"

A shift in the fabric of space, and with a flutter of incorporeal wings I was standing behind my former superior. His hand was stretched out toward Dean, a curse still forming on his lips. He sensed my arrival just in time to meet my eyes as my sword met his heart.

* * *

><p>They say that when a human loses one sense, the others are heightened. That's an apt analogy for what happened to me after the angels left. It seemed that for every angelic quality I lost, some aspect of human life became clearer to me. I finally understood Dean's complaints about the sorry quality of our food when the stash of gas station snacks in the back seat, which had once been inoffensive to me, became difficult to choke down day after day. At one point I told Dean that I was worried that we were being targeted by Famine, because I couldn't stop thinking about cheeseburgers. He told me that that was normal.<p>

Pain, cold, heat, hunger; every weakness of my flesh came into sharper focus with each day that passed.

The sex, however, became amazing. I would advise any angel to denounce Heaven just for a chance to experience orgasm the way humans do.

I lay on the bed in Bobby's guestroom, waiting for the walls to stop spinning after our latest lovemaking session, when Dean asked, "What happened to your coat?" I forced myself to focus, and lifted my head to see Dean picking up my coat from where we had discarded it on the floor some hours ago. He was poking one finger through a jagged hole.

I remembered where the hole had come from: a stray bullet as we had run away from the suburb of Tucson, Arizona where a gang of children had taken control after a load of demons fresh from Hell had taken the adults as vessels. It turns out that, left to their own devices and given access to their parents' firearms, even twelve-year-olds can be quite formidable. It had been there that I had learned that I could no longer teleport. The timing of that revelation had not been ideal.

Fixing my clothes had always been so easy that I hadn't even counted it among my powers. I wasn't something I did; it just happened that my trench coat never stayed dirty or torn for long. The bullet hole, still there after nearly a month, proved to me that the process of my humanization was complete.

When we left Bobby's house, he having no new leads on the Colt for us to follow, I threw my coat into one of the junk heaps in the yard.

* * *

><p>I lit a joint as we drove through Las Vegas. Since the battle with Michael had been called off, Lucifer had begun hunting us mercilessly. Maybe he thought that killing Dean would be enough to make Sam give in. We had come to Vegas to blend in with the crowd and shake off the latest henchmen Lucifer had sent after us. Even at the end of the world, the lights of the Strip still blazed, and the people still swarmed to them.<p>

"What are you doing?" Dean demanded when he noticed the smoke billowing around the passenger seat, "There are cops everywhere."

"With all the murders and disappearances lately," I said, "I doubt they care that two vagrants are lighting up in their car. You want a hit?"

Dean stared at me long and hard before taking the joint and giving it a halfhearted pull. "Since when do you smoke weed?" he said hoarsely, holding in a cough.

I shrugged. "These days, it's preferable to being sober," I said. Then, just in case he was thinking of judging me, I jerked my thumb at the flask on the floor and added, "I think you'd agree."

"Yeah, yeah," was all he said.

We drove in silence for a while, my skin prickling pleasantly, before I said, "Did you know that marijuana is an aphrodisiac?"

Dean snorted. Not quite a laugh. "You've turned into a sex fiend since you turned human."

"You know you love it," I said, smiling, "I used to be so repressed. It's better this way, isn't it?" He didn't disagree, at least not out loud.

* * *

><p>Dean sat with his foot resting on the brake, staring up through the windshield while the Impala's engine rumbled. I had stopped looking thirty seconds ago, as soon as I had realized what it was, but Dean just stared. He stared as if the road sign hanging above us, inanimate chunk of metal that it was, had somehow personally wronged him.<p>

I wanted to give him time to come to grips with the enormity of it, but when I heard engines coming toward us from the direction of the city I put my hand on his arm. "Dean," I said, "We should go."

"Yeah," he sighed, forcing his eyes back down to the road. The tires screeched as he pulled a U-turn and sped back the way we had come.

We left behind us a green sign with the words "City of New York" printed in white on it. Over the surface was scrawled in red, "Croatoan."

* * *

><p>Dean seemed to see Camp Chitaqua as our salvation: a defensible fortress from which we could ward off all comers. I saw it as a prison, and, ultimately, a tomb. For us to give up driving in favor of digging in and hanging tight meant that the tables had finally turned. We had run out of places to run to. Now it was just a matter of losing as little ground as possible each day until, one day, inevitably, we would lose it all.<p>

We were a sad little band: me and Dean, Chuck, Bobby, and as many Hunters as Bobby could find who were still alive after the last three years. Even though I could see the hopelessness of the situation, their optimism was infectious. As we unloaded the weapons, food, and supplies from our trucks, there was a sense that we would be safer now that we were organized.

I tried to focus on the work at hand, but I couldn't keep my eyes off Dean. While the rest of us worked on the trucks, Dean was with his baby. He opened the glove compartment and pocketed everything of value. The few fake IDs that we hadn't already gotten rid of he threw on the ground. They were useless now. He cleared a few odds and ends out of the back seat, and then he went to work on the trunk. I had only ever seen him pull a few things out of that trunk at a time, but this time he picked up as many weapons as he could carry and disappeared into the cabin that we had chosen to be the armory. He reappeared empty-handed, and went back to the Impala for another armful. He continued until the trunk was completely empty – a sight I had never seen before. I prided myself in being able to read Dean fairly well, but I could not decipher the expression on his face at that moment.

He closed the trunk, locked all the doors, and threw the keys as hard as he could out into the weeds.

I went to him then, one hand on his arm. "Dean?" I ventured, uncomprehending.

"It's time to let go, Cas," he said, his voice surprisingly calm, "Of everything. Our pasts. Our families. We don't matter. The fucking car doesn't matter. All that matters is surviving long enough to get the Colt and kill Lucifer. So no more running. This is our line. This is where we fight and die."

He didn't say it loud enough for the others to hear. I guess he wasn't as optimistic as I had thought.

* * *

><p>Right before the phones finally went down and stayed down, I called Sam. I don't know why, three years after the fact, I thought it would help. I just saw the signal on my phone flicker to life for the first time in weeks, and before I knew it I was dialing Sam's number. To my infinite surprise, he picked up.<p>

"Dean?" was the first thing he said. I had forgotten that Dean had given me his phone last year when mine died in a fire. A literal fire.

"Sorry," I answered.

"Castiel," said Sam, the word coming out as a sigh, though I couldn't tell if it was of relief or disappointment. He sounded unspeakably tired. "Not that I'm complaining about hearing from an old friend, but why the Hell would you call me after all this time?" I hesitated, and in the silence he filled in his own worst fear. "Oh God," he breathed, "Don't tell me…"

"It's not about Dean," I assured him, and this time when he sighed it was definitely relief. "Well," I stammered, "It is about Dean. He's fine. He's just… I dunno. He's different."

"So are you," Sam noted, "For one thing, three years ago I would not have been able to imagine you saying 'dunno.'"

"Fair enough," I said. The connection was beginning to crackle. I was wasting time. "Sam, he's miserable. He blames himself for everything, and it's getting to him. I mean, it used to be that even when things were really bad and he felt like he had to get tough or serious, it was still Dean under there, you know? Now he's in end-of-the-world mode all the time, and I feel like I don't know who he is underneath the mask anymore. I'm not even sure if there's anything there at all."

I heard the sound of Sam's hand swiping across his face. "Did you call to confide in me, or do you expect me to do something about it?"

"You could come back." The words were out of my mouth before I could think about them, but even when my brain caught up and thought about it, the idea remained a good one. Sam always kept Dean stable. Years ago, when the rift between them was fresh, I didn't dare mention Sam to Dean for fear of opening old wounds. But now, what was there to lose?

"Cas…" Sam said, his voice suddenly weak, "I don't think… I… Listen, I can't just come back. Dean sent me away. The only way I'm coming back is if he asks me back himself, and after three years of ignoring me, I don't think that's gonna happen."

"It will!" I promised him, hope taking hold, "Just wait a second. I'll go find him." I stood and turned, and was so startled that I dropped the phone. Dean was standing not a foot from my face, having just entered my cabin door.

"Who are you talking to?" he asked, glancing at the phone on the floor. The look on his face made my response die in my throat, but he seemed to already know.

Without the slightest change in expression, Dean raised one booted foot and brought it down on the fallen cell phone. It broke with a crunch and a crackle of sparks. Something was moving against my legs, and it took me a second to realize that it was my hands shaking.

He didn't raise a hand against me, but he laid me low with his eyes. "If you ever try to contact Sam again, I will feed you to the goddamn Croats," he said, and the words terrified me less than the fact that I believed them.

* * *

><p>Control was always important to Dean. He had so little of it growing up, and he fought so hard to keep it as an adult. At Chitaqua, he met a difficult paradox. He was the undisputed leader of the camp, but outside its walls there were forces so much stronger than him that he might as well have been a child again. I think that's why, during sex, it became necessary for him to either maintain perfect control or relinquish it entirely.<p>

The former was what he needed the night I found myself with my face held down to the mattress by a hand twisted into my hair, my arm wrenched behind my back, Dean slamming into me again and again as I rode the line between kinky pleasure and agonized panic. It had been several minutes since I stopped being able to tell whether the muffled noises coming out of my mouth were moans or screams.

We had had rough sex before, but this was different. For the first time, I was not one hundred percent sure that Dean would stop if I asked him to.

Later, while he slept with his head resting on my shoulder, his breath steady against my neck, I tried to ignore the aches in my body and the doubt in my heart. He had changed, but he was still my Dean. I still loved him.

* * *

><p>It's amazing that in a world where basic necessities like food and toilet paper are so hard to come by, it was almost embarrassingly easy to get high. Whenever we left the camp, whether it was on a raid or a food run, I would take the opportunity to add to my growing stockpile of mind-altering substances.<p>

I flipped over mattresses and tore up floorboards. I raided freezers and wine cellars. College dorms were a goldmine. Whenever we went anywhere near a pharmacy, I had a field day.

After a while, Dean stopped assigning me to the kinds of missions that allowed me time to wander off and scavenge. I guess he thought that would help, and that he wouldn't be forced to talk to me about the issue. But by then, the others at the camp knew what kinds of things I was looking for and they were more than happy to trade for booze, of which I had collected enough to last me the rest of my life.

The one time Dean tried to confront me about it directly, I asked him, "When's the last time you had a drink?" He didn't bring it up again. He self-medicated in his way, and I in mine.

* * *

><p>I wasn't there when Bobby Singer died. I got the story from Yeager. A small team had gone back to Bobby's house for some manuscripts. Dean had tried to talk Bobby out of it, but in the end he had given the mission the green light. He could never say no to Bobby, even when the old man insisted on joining the mission himself. Something about, "Idjits messing up his papers."<p>

The Croats let them get all the way to the house before they sprang the trap. Five of our people went in. Only two came out.

When Yeager gave Dean the news, all Dean asked was, "Did you confirm the kill?"

Yeager nodded. "All three," he said, "I wouldn't have left them behind otherwise. Dean, I'm sor…"

"Take the rest of the day off," Dean interrupted, "You did good, saving yourself and Risa. If it had been anyone else heading that mission, no one would have made it out."

Dean didn't really believe that. He truly thought that if he had gone with Bobby, he would have been able to save him. He told me as much through choked sobs when we were alone that night. I hadn't seen Dean cry in years.

"It's not your fault," I tried to tell him.

"It's all my fault," he replied, "I could have stopped it. All of it."

"What are you talking about?"

Dean wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Every angle of him drooped with the weight of his grief and his guilt. "I should have said yes to Michael," he said.

"No," I began, "The destruction Michael would have wrought…"

"How could it possibly have been worse than this?" Dean cut me off, throwing his arms wide to indicate the whole shitty world we now lived in.

I had no answer for him.

"I mean, clearly I was an idiot for ever thinking I could go against the plan," Dean said, an unhinged chuckle rising in the back of this throat, "Yellow-eyes had a plan. So did Lilith, and so did you and the rest of your fucking angel buddies. Everyone's always ten steps ahead of me, and there I am with a bucket trying to keep the tide from coming in. Then, at last, I manage to fuck up someone's big plan. But joke's on me! That was the one plan that I wasn't supposed to fuck with. That was my chance to save the world, and I was just so used to being an ornery ass that I fought it every step of the way. If I could go back, I'd say yes. In a heartbeat, Cas, in a fucking heartbeat."

A better man would have stayed with him and comforted him. But I couldn't listen anymore. I left him to drink himself to sleep, and late that night I heard him outside in the rain screaming, "Yes! Yes! Can you hear me, you motherfucker? I'm saying yes!"

No one answered him.

* * *

><p>I crawled through the mud, my fingers stinging from the cold, rain falling on my back, the shouts of the Croats pursuing me ricocheting off the trees and sounding like they were coming from every direction. Every time my right foot moved against the ground, I felt a stab of pain from my toes to my knee.<p>

In hindsight, when that Croat cornered me back in town, I probably should have considered other options before jumping out of a second-story window.

All I could think about was moving forward. I had to reach the road and find the trucks. If I could just get back to the trucks, Dean would find me. But my limbs were going numb, and every inch of progress took all of my strength. It felt like forever that I had been pulling my hands and knees out of the sucking mud, putting one in front of the other, expecting to feel the Croats' hands on me at any second. I looked up, and through the trees I could see that it was beginning to get dark.

Somehow, the Croats didn't find me. I crawled until the sky was black. My breath formed clouds in my narrowing field of vision, and the mud became penetratingly cold. I pulled the ends of my sleeves over my hands and hoped that I would still have working fingers by the end of this.

When I heard voices up ahead, I thought at first that it was the Croats cutting me off. Then I recognized them as my friends, everyone shouting over each other.

"Get her into the back!" "Jesus, there's so much blood…" "Was she infected?" "No, they never got close enough…" "Are you absolutely fucking positive?" "Yes!" "Any other casualties?" "I lost count." "There's three more here, and we left at least five behind." "Dead or stranded?" "Dead, all of them." "Grayson's bad, I don't think he's gonna make it." "Then leave him." "We can't just leave him!"

There was a gunshot, and it silenced all the voices at once. I was finally able to pick Dean's voice out when he next said, "You can leave him now. Everyone get in the goddamn trucks before they catch up with us."

"Wait," I said, "Dean…" But my voice was weak even to my own ears. I could barely whisper. I heard the trucks fire up, and through the trees I saw their lights come on. They were so close! So frustratingly, impossibly close, but I had no more strength to raise a hand or my voice. As the roar of engines faded and the red of the taillights disappeared into the darkness, I fell into the mud and knew no more.

I wondered briefly if, as an angel-turned-human, my soul would be subject to some sort of afterlife. I hoped I wouldn't go to Heaven. That would have been awkward.

Quite abruptly, I was lying on my back on a hard surface that was moving and bumping beneath me. The sound of crunching gravel, the smell of gasoline. I deduced that I was on a bench in one of the trucks. I couldn't focus to see anyone's face, but someone was holding my hand. I closed my eyes again.

When I opened them, I was in the hospital back at Chitaqua. Our "hospital" consisted of a small cabin with ten cots, a variety of half-stocked first aid kits, some limited supplies scrounged from hospitals, and Misty – a twenty-something girl who had once been in school to become a nurse. She seemed to have her hands full with two other beds containing figures swathed in bloody bandages, so I didn't give her any indication that I was awake. Instead, I listened to the shouted drama that was unfolding on the other side of the hospital door.

"Five confirmed dead, and you didn't think to tell me that one of them was Cas?" That was Dean.

"They were on our tails! We had to get out of there! What difference would it have made?" I thought I recognized the voice of a young man named Ashley. He had been leading my squad.

"It might have made a difference that he wasn't really fucking dead!"

"He jumped out a window and there were at least ten Croats on the ground chasing him!"

"I'm sorry, when did 'confirmed dead' start meaning 'probably dead,' you dumb shit?" I knew enough about Dean's tone of voice to be able to predict that this wouldn't end well for Ashley.

"Okay, you're right! It was a shitty situation and I made a mistake. But you know for a fact that you wouldn't have gone back looking for him – Hell, you wouldn't have given a shit – if it hadn't been your boyfr…"

Two sounds: the wet crack of knuckles on facial bones and the hollow, awkward thump of a body hitting a wooden floor. Saw that coming.

The door cracked open, and once Dean saw that I was awake he came inside. His expression made me wonder if he was about to kiss me or punch me in the face. "How're you feeling, Cas?" he said, his voice surprisingly gentle, "You need anything?"

I cleared my throat a few times and asked hoarsely, "Did I lose any fingers or toes?" I was under a pile of blankets, but I was still freezing. I must have been dangerously hypothermic by the time they picked me up.

"No, you're gonna be fine," Dean assured me.

"I would trade all twenty of them for some of my Vicodin right now," I said. I only half joking. Maybe a quarter joking.

He sat with me in silence for a long time. He sat while Misty treated the two other casualties, stabilizing one and covering the other with a sheet when she was unable to control the bleeding. It was over an hour after Dean came in before Misty stepped outside for a cigarette with a muttered, "Fucking hell."

That hour was the longest uninterrupted time I had spent with Dean in months that didn't involve us taking our clothes off.

Finally he spoke, sounding so sad and weak, "I can't do this anymore, Cas."

I didn't think that it was really fair for me to have to comfort him when I was the one lying in a hospital bed, but I tried anyway. "Yes you can, Dean. You're stronger than you think, and everyone's counting on you…"

He shook his head. "I didn't mean this," he said, waving his hands to indicate the camp and the whole fucked-up world. "I meant this." He pointed his finger between himself and me. I finally recognized the expression on his face as the same one he had worn when he threw away the keys to the Impala.

"Oh," I said, because I couldn't think of a single better thing to say.

There were so many questions, and so many things to say, and none of them would have made one bit of difference. Silently, mutually, we agreed not to ask or say any of them. Dean stood and walked out of the hospital, letting the door close softly behind him.

* * *

><p>Over the next few months, Dean and I tried to be friends, and then tried to just be civil, and then settled on trying to ignore each other. After my foot healed, I discovered that there were plenty of women in the camp who were eager to join me in my bed now that I was unattached. I heard from various sources that the same was true for Dean. I had almost managed to convince myself that I was over him when he appeared in my cabin one night, staring at me as if I still belonged to him.<p>

"Hey, Cas," he slurred, leaning against the door. I didn't point out to him that he was drunk. It seemed bad form, when I was currently stoned out of my mind.

"What do you want?"

He shrugged as he wandered closer to where I was sitting against the wall. "I couldn't sleep. Went for a walk."

"You can walk anywhere."

"I was lonely."

"Then go bother Michelle. Isn't she the one you're with this week?"

He wound closer and closer until he was standing over me. "I miss you," he said.

I suppressed a humorless laugh. "In case you don't remember," I told him, "You're the one who broke up with me."

Suddenly his hands were on my collar, lifting me to me feet and shoving me against the wall. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but he smelled just the way he used to and our bodies still fit together perfectly when he pressed himself against me. "Come on, Cas," he rasped into my ear, and I felt each syllable in my spine, "You know what I need."

"I shouldn't…" I tried to say before the rest of my breath rushed from my lungs in response to his tongue on my neck. I hadn't known it was possible to want something so badly while, at the same time, fearing it.

His hand released its grip on my shirt to trail down my chest, coming to rest between my legs. "Don't make me beg you," Dean pleaded.

We fell as easily as we had the first time. Dean laid himself naked before me, offering himself to me, and I took him. I took every inch of him, and every inch was as I had remembered it. For a moment we were back in time, the world just beginning to end, the two of us still so full of hope and so full of love. I let myself believe that Dean had come to me that night for some reason other than despair and habit. I let myself believe that need could mean want could mean love.

I woke to a cold and empty bed.

I found Dean outside, already dressed and briefing a squad for a mission. There was no trace left of the vulnerability he had shown me before. "Dean?" I called to him when the squad had left.

He looked down on me as if he didn't know me. "What?" he said.

"About last night…"

"What about it?"

I stopped. Finally it became clear to me that what I had hoped against hope was a new beginning was actually a final end. Dean had finally succeeded in doing what he had tried to do that day when he visited me in the hospital. He had gotten his fill of me, and he had left me behind. There was nothing left of the man I had loved behind the cold eyes that now stared me down, daring me to press the issue.

He was no longer my Dean. Perhaps he hadn't been for a long time, and I just hadn't noticed.

"Nothing," I said.

* * *

><p>I am standing in my cabin. The walls refuse to stand still, which could have something to do with the LSD I took this morning. A group of charming young ladies is leaving by the front door. In front of me is my Dean.<p>

The only way anyone could ever describe Dean as open and trusting is if they were comparing the Dean of 2009 with his counterpart of 2014. I haven't truly realized how much he has changed until the evidence stands before me, proud and perfect, the way he was when I first fell in love with him.

"What happened to you?" he asks me, and the answer is impossible to give.

It's strange to see them together, later that day when we all meet in the briefing room. The Dean with whom I have spent the last five years is like a parody of himself with all the good traits burned away and only his arrogance and ruthlessness remaining. The Dean who has arrived that day from the past, though flawed as always, is a beacon of perfection in comparison. The love I thought I had managed to smother comes roaring back to life in an instant.

When we drive to the city where the final showdown is to take place, I make sure to get Dean in a car alone with me. I know I should be worried. Everything is happening so fast. The Colt. Sam. Lucifer. But all I can do is grin like a fool at the simple joy of remembering what it's like to be in love untainted by years of resentment. Although the amphetamines might have something to do with that too.

Our car is in the back of the line. I can't even see taillights ahead of us anymore. I tell Dean about what it's like for me to be human, and I'm surprised at the bitterness in my own voice. I used to enjoy some parts about humanity, but in the year since my last night with Dean the bad parts have come into sharper relief. It sometimes gets to the point that I wish I had gone with the angels when they left. Now all remains for me is, as Dean once said, to hold the line and die on it. Why not ring a few gongs before the lights go out, indeed.

That gives me an idea.

I pull off to the side of the road and kill the engine. We could all die on this mission. We all probably will. Here is my last chance, as if Zachariah dropped this Dean off here especially for me. One more fuck in the back seat, a dying man's last request. Dean will go along with it if I insist. He may not have admitted it to himself yet, but he loves me already. I could have him one more time. Just like old times.

"What's going on, Cas? Why'd we stop?" His voice snaps me back to reality. He is looking at me in confusion, oblivious to how close I am to leaning across and kissing him.

And then it occurs to me that, while this Dean is my Dean as sure as anything, I am not his Castiel. He does not love me. The person he loves is a serious, self-righteous, naïve angel in a trench coat who is waiting for him five years ago. And it has been a very long time since I was that person. Almost as long as it has been since the Dean of my time was the Dean sitting next to me now.

"Uh," I say, "Those pills are hitting me harder than I thought. You wanna drive?"

"Sure," he says, looking relieved as we switched seats.

As he pulls back onto the road, I want to say something. I have to warn him. There has to be something I can tell him that will keep him from walking the same troubled path that I have watched him walk for the last five years. Some secret that will keep our love from souring and his heart from growing hard. "Hey, Dean?" I say.

"Yeah, Cas?"

But there is nothing I can say that he is ready to hear. "Nevermind," I say as we drive into the darkness.


	2. Epilogue

I ran across a piece of fanart by redribbonrobot on Tumblr that wondered what would have happened to 2014!Cas if he had survived the final battle. I wrote this to accompany it. Later, I realized that it made a perfect coda for this old fic of mine. Warning: there is nothing but pain here.

* * *

><p>He looked so peaceful, lying there.<p>

Castiel didn't expect to still be here. When he had followed Dean's final order, he had fully expected to die in a blaze of glory. Or at least in a spark of bravery. Whatever. But he had suddenly found himself on the other side of that final battle with nothing to show for it but a broken hand and a few flesh wounds.

He was alive.

And for a few minutes, he let himself believe that maybe Dean was still alive too.

He found the body in the garden. Lucifer was gone, as was the Dean from the past. Castiel was alone.

For a while Castiel just stared. It had been years since Dean had worn such a vulnerable expression. Castiel had gotten used to seeing nothing on Dean's face but intense stares, angry snarls, and painful grimaces. Even when he slept, Dean's brow had always been furrowed and his lips always turned down. But now all the lines were smoothed out and Dean looked almost the way he sometimes used to look way back when Castiel had first fallen in love with him.

He looked so peaceful.

But Castiel was not at peace.

He reached out with his good hand. He only intended to brush some dirt from Dean's cheek, but instead of drawing back afterwards, his hand just rested there. His fingers parted Dean's hair, and his palm rested heavily on his face. For a moment, Castiel almost thought he could feel the tingle of a long-forgotten power coursing between their bodies. He concentrated on it, trying to force it to the fore. He tried to feel the same surge of energy that he used to take for granted whenever he laid his hands on Dean and healed his wounds.

When nothing happened, Castiel just pressed harder as if physical strength could make up for his complete lack of divinity. He called out in his mind to God or whoever might be listening. He begged for the power to perform this one last miracle. He didn't care what the cost would be. He would gladly accept any punishment, even death, as long as Dean would open his eyes.

Dean's eyes remained closed, his head lolling loosely on his shoulders. Castiel withdrew his hand.

He looked up for the first time in what might have been minutes or hours, and he saw the world. He saw Camp Chitaqua, or what was left of it. He saw the Croatoan infection spreading surely across the globe, snuffing out the last pockets of resistance. He even saw the angels up above, shaking their heads as they turned their backs once and for all on the whole ugly mess.

Then he looked back down again, and saw that his hand held a pistol. The safety was off. His finger was on the trigger.

He looked up at the world.

He looked back down at the gun.

And he found that he couldn't make up his mind.


End file.
